Store Your Movies in Your Hard Drive

Do you have DVD titles you want to watch in your iPod? Are you worried about scratching your DVD disks? Backup those movies in your hard drive, welcome to the world of Ripping DVDs. Ripping is defined in Wikipedia as "the process of copying audio or video content to a hard disk, typically from removable media or media streams such as aniPod. The word is used to refer to all forms of media. Despite the name, the media is not damaged during the extraction process, nor is the data deleted from the source". 

Here is a simple and most of all FREE solution. An application called Handbrake. I first encountered this application as I was looking for a bunch of free utilities that I could use in my new Macbook. Luckily Handbrake is also available for Windows users as well as Linux users. You can download it at Handbreak's official site, click on downloads, and choose your operating system. For easier access, it is recommended that you choose the GUI version.

After downloading, follow the installation instructions. Once its done, a shortcut will appear in your desktop. For the Mac you can find it at the Applications folder, just drag it to the dock bar for easy access. Then you're all set.

Upon starting the application, you will see a screen like this :

Click on the source button, to select the media you will encode. If you have more than 1 DVD drive, you have an option on which drive you've placed your media. If you managed to have an image copy of the DVD you can also select this instead of the media.

Once you have selected the source of the video, you need to select the video format in which you will encode the DVD. Presets are located at the right portion, you can select an array of video format for easier options, choose the iPod preset if you plan to watch the movie in small screens like iPods or Zunes. This option lessens the amount of file size of the video encoded, but has a poor quality if watched in big screens like laptops or LCD TVs. For better quality choose AppleTV or Classic, this will give you an almost identical quality as the original DVD.

Before proceeding, it is wise to choose ".mp4" format in the output settings. This is the most flexible, most compressed video format to date. 

And now you're last step to glory, choose the destination on where you will place the encoded file by clicking browse and selecting the folder or drive. For faster encoding, DO NOT choose an external drive, your internal drive is your fastest ticket to finishing the job. Remember: SATA or IDE is faster than USB or Firewire.

Lastly, click the start button and grab a cocktail as this will take close to an hour to finish. You will know that its done when you hear a ting, a message will appear, and do as the message says;"Put that cocktail down".